RIVER GAMBLIN’

Watching grass grow wasn’t always a priority at Locks and Dam No. 26.

The technicians here, staffing the controls of one of the world’s mightiest rivers, are entrusted with keeping billions of dollars in cargo vital to the nation’s economy navigating safely through St. Louis. But quietly, hoping not to draw attention to himself, David Busse broke 70 years of tradition to change the way the Mississippi is managed.

Quite literally, Busse and his crew at the Army Corps of Engineers are matching the pace at which grass grows, opening and closing the Mississippi’s gates to manipulate its pools down to a fraction of an inch so that birds and other creatures can thrive there.

Navigation tradition dies hard in the corps, which has long struggled to control nature, not empower it. As champions of commerce and defenders of public safety, corps engineers build dams. They channelize streams. They stop floods, or at least try to. And in doing so, they have destroyed many of the wetlands and grasses that nourished North America’s migratory birds.

But that mind-set is slowly changing, and it happened unceremoniously here, where the engineers simply took matters into their own hands one day about three years ago. With little more than the flip of a switch, Busse’s team has created 3,000 acres of new grasslands along the Upper Mississippi, a stopover for hungry and tired migratory birds.

Every summer, the technicians draw down three deep pools that jut out along the river, keeping them low for 30 days. As the water retreats, seeds germinate and grass creeps toward the sun’s rays. Then, the technicians raise the water at the painstakingly slow pace of an inch or so a day to keep the surface just below the tips of the new grasses.

The drawdown leaves the river with less of a cushion for ships, which means the corps gatekeepers must be extra vigilant. Almost 80,000 ships and barges pass through these locks yearly, carrying 78 million tons of corn, coal, crude oil and other goods.

“It requires a lot more checking of the hydraulic situation upstream because if we are wrong, we can lose navigation,” Busse said. “We only have one project purpose--to maintain navigation--and we will not and cannot do anything to imperil that. So when we are operating on this fringe, we are taking on a lot of responsibility. But we think the benefit is well worth it. We are giving nature enough time to grow the grasses.”

In an era when many environmental issues are polarized, when the usual refrain from the behemoth, slow-moving corps is “no way” or “let’s study that,” the change in river management shows conservation can be relatively simple and painless.

During the drawdown, a Missouri biologist heads out every week to measure how much the grasses, called smartweed, have grown. Then Busse or one of his staff continuously monitors the flow from upstream and calculates how much to manipulate the gates controlling the river to match the grasses’ growth. A technician punches the data into a computer, opening the gates to lower the pools, closing them to raise the water level. Sometimes the instructions need to change every half-hour to keep up with the river’s changing flow.

The lush, emerald green quilt provides an oasis for ducks, herons, terns, rails and other birds that need to rest and feed during their long journey along the flyway’s course. Nationally, more than half of all wetlands and grasslands have vanished, and because of the loss of habitat, waterfowl populations plummeted in the 1970s and 1980s. They are now beginning to rebound because of conservation efforts and improved weather conditions in the United States and Canada.

The new grasses also help filter pollutants that flow down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Three thousand acres is a substantial area of new habitat,” said John Smith, a wildlife research supervisor at the Missouri Department of Conservation. “We’ve lost a lot and what we’ve tried to do is offset some of those losses.”

Scott Faber of the environmental group American Rivers, a longtime critic of the corps’ management of the Mississippi, complimented the St. Louis team for “some innovative things to create habitat that are consistent with the navigation purposes of the river.” And Sean Kelly, a migratory bird specialist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the corps “seems a little more open to experimenting.”

Environmentalists had long wanted the corps to draw the pools down, putting a virtual halt to navigation for the entire summer. The corps dismissed the requests as extreme.

But on a summer day in 1994, Ken Dalrymple, a Missouri state wildlife biologist, visited the lock to discuss less drastic ideas for handling the pools. Busse couldn’t tell a mallard from a tern, and he couldn’t fathom why anyone cared so much about grass. But he listened as Dalrymple told him about the river’s shrinking “macrophyte community” and how the Upper Mississippi ranks among 34 waterfowl areas of critical concern in the country.

Busse knew drawing the pools down would remove some of the comfort zone for ships. But he also knew that satellite readings are so sophisticated that they provide an early warning about any unforeseen risk of a river that is too shallow.

Altering the drawdown is within his power, so Busse didn’t ask his superiors for permission. “I got up from that table and made a call to my technician and said, ‘Don’t raise the pool.’ It began that day, and we’ve been doing it since,” Busse said.

Since then, superiors at the corps have studied and sanctioned the drawdown and confirmed that it poses no threat to shipping. Claude Strauser, chief of Busse’s section, said that although the carefully paced emptying and filling means the managers must be more attentive, there is no added cost because they staff the locks 24 hours a day anyway.

Along other river reaches, the corps is contemplating similar moves. Upstream in St. Paul, Minn., 10,000 acres of grasslands could be created in one pool alone.

Some of Busse’s colleagues ridicule the policy at Locks and Dam No. 26 as frivolous, or simply “not the way we do things here.” But Busse says: “If they want to know if it’ll work, they can come out here and see.”

Ensuring that ships pass safely to and from the Gulf of Mexico has always been--and always will be--the corps’ primary mission. But now Busse takes great pride in watching birds feeding along the grassy banks. The corps even won a conservationist of the year award in 1996. Who, Busse asks, would have ever envisioned that?

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Barges and Birds

Locks and dams are critical to navigation on the Mississippi River. By mannipulating them, the Corps. of Engineers keeps the channel deep enough for ships to pass through safely. But in St. Louis the corps has altered how it controls the river, in order to assist wildlife. In summer, three pools alongside the river are drawn down for about 30 days so grasses can grow, see below, providing an oasis for migrating birds.

Mississippi Migration Route

Breeding in the north and heading south to escape winter, migratory birds instinctively follow routes known as flyways. Many waterfowl populations have plummeted in the past two decades because of destruction of breeding and wintering habitats along the flyways.

The St. Louis region of the Mississippi River is one of the busiest stretches of river in the nation. About 78,000 barges, carrying about 80 million tons of cargo-plus about 6,000 recreatioal boats-pass through this area yearly.

Source: Missouri Department of Conservation